


Dazed

by professortennant



Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Depression, Gen, Immortal!Merlin, M/M, Mentions of Drug Abuse and Alcoholism, Mentions of self-harm, Modern, Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-17
Updated: 2013-02-17
Packaged: 2017-11-29 15:36:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/688595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/professortennant/pseuds/professortennant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It started with one, two, three ales. A pint here. A half-pint there. Something shoved into his hand from the back out of a dirty old barrel. Something the barkeep, with a broken, yellowed smile had given out, "Something special to ease your ailments, young sir."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dazed

It started with one, two, three ales. A pint here. A half-pint there. Something shoved into his hand from the back out of a dirty old barrel. Something the barkeep, with a broken, yellowed smile had given out, "Something special to ease your ailments, young sir."

So he drank and drank. Empty bottles littered his room, shards of broken porcelain surrounded his room. His breath, previously sweet with the taste of Arthur on his lips, now ran stale and sharp from the tang of cheap alcohol. He knew, if Arthur was here--But he stopped himself. Arthur wasn't here. And who knew how long he'd have to wait to hear his exasperation and feel his rough hands haul him up and scold him.

But a winter of drinking--something that warmed his bones and dulled the empty ache in his chest--passed and it turned into spring. Flowers and trees and new life. But nothing new for Merlin. The same old pain, no new life breathed into his King, nothing. Ale was useless, he'd built a bit of a tolerance, the blur of nameless faces and the dulling of memories of a blonde face with a kind smile gone. 

But with Spring comes blossoming plants and his time with Gaius, his memories of trips to the woods with Arthur at his side, teasingly telling him if he ate this group of berries he'd be wandering the woods naked soon, all of this culminated in a new desire to blunt the sharp knife of loss. So he picked herbs and pushed them into a wooden pipe, he watched those around him age, Gwen gaining Crow's feet and wrinkles and grey hair, and Gaius finally pass on into the darkness of death and old age. 

He watched it all happen--the fall of the great Camelot, the kingdom Arthur never saw at her peak--watched it all through a loopy haze and he sat puffing on his pipe and inhaling the sweet scent of forgotten memories.

The weeds and dried herbs did their job faithfully. They became his best friends, accompanying his through the ages and staying by his side, heavy in his pocket and his pipe. But with the dullness of pain, the plants brought a sharpness to memory. A whip of blonde hair, a hearty laugh on the air, a warm palm on the back of his neck, phantom lips ghosting across his cheek and lips. 

The seasons changed, the times changed, even the people changed--but the drugs never did. People, his funny little people, thought of new and better and stronger ways to dull pain and forget memories. Opium, stronger ale, whiskey, more concentrated herbs that smoked with sweet and tangy odors. He walked the earth, running from the ache and hole in his heart, desperate to patch it up with a paste of alcohol and drugs. In the darkest corners of his life, a shattered bottle, with its sharp and ragged edges, provided relief, slicing across pale skin.  
He wanted to push the boundaries and see just how immortal he really was. But imagining Arthur's face when--if--he saw those scars stopped the practice cold. Merlin still longed for the release.

So he became lost to drugs and alcohol, his and Arthur's name fallen into myth and legend. He was John Doe, that homeless guy on the corner, a gentlemen of the Victorian age, a sailor, a middle-class stage magician, he was the shadow on the street, he was Merlin. But no matter how long he waited, no matter how hard he searched, his Arthur was gone, his king, his captain, lost to a lake he could never find.

Merlin felt the tendrils of his magic shrivel and coil deep inside him, trying to escape the poison he put in his body, and even then, when his magic went into hibernation, Merlin could not drag the bottle from his lips or the pipe from his hands (or, in these days, a cigarette. Pipes were reserved for the elite and the collected). Though the substances killed his magic, it killed the pain and it kept Arthur's memory alive.

So he drank and smoke and let his magic wither away, waiting for the day his King would pull him out of darkness.


End file.
